We have been more or less snowed in, in the cottage where my husband lives, in the northwest Highlands for more than a week. The experience has made me reflect on the importance of neighbours - and wonder if there are too many unoccupied second homes in villages like ours.
Our cottage is a long way from the main thoroughfare, over what we like to boast is “a glorious mountain road” - a switchback of steep rises, potholes where ice cracks the tarmac open every year, and precipitous drops.
After the first deep snowfall, a new-looking bright orange snowplough would appear late morning each day, driving gingerly on the icerink turns. One day it went into a ditch and had to be rescued by an enormous recovery truck; another time a blade broke and the driver had to turn back. When the snowplough didn’t make it as far as our hamlet, heavy snow piled up over the white space where the black road usually runs. Villagers grew anxious; visitors postponed travel plans. The morning after the second breakdown, two drivers appeared in what looked like an older, larger machine that the blacksmith could fix.
One day, some neighbours trying to get home messaged that they were stuck in a snowdrift, and a rescue party immediately set out to free them in an old, but well-preserved, landrover.
After the gritter/ snowplough came over, intrepid residents could venture out to get supplies, racing to return before the temperatures started to fall, around sunset. Before leaving, they would sometimes stop as they passed or send a message asking if we needed anything. Towards the end of the week, we had three offers one morning to get shopping. By then, we were trying to think of imaginative things to do with the random food left by summer visitors - four open jars of peanut butter; 11 cans of chickpeas - so such luxuries as a newspaper, fresh vegetables and milk were very welcome. We weren’t the only ones struggling - the little birds were grateful for the fat balls our neighbour makes from used cooking fat and bird seed and hangs in the trees about the place.
Some of it was fun. I made experimental peanut-butter brownies, enhanced with alcoholic berries left over from a neighbour’s home-made hooch. We shared a delicious fondue heated over candles, like Alpinistes in a mountain hut, with friends one evening. Other neighbours made a delicious lamb curry with meat from their well-stocked freezer and invited us over to share it and massacre a couple of bothy ballads.
Rob and I are both working so we have plenty to do during the day. But I have also been suffering from a painful condition, which I think may be sciatica. It appears to be worsened by the cold - so just the essentials of life here have been pretty exhausting at times - getting wood from the byre, lighting a fire with damp wood and no kindling, wearing old boots that turn into sponges after five minutes in mushy snow, drying wet socks in a cold kitchen.
Most days, however, I wrapped up enough - with plastic bags over my socks - to go for a slow constitutional with my walking poles, and the landscape has been magical, especially on a couple of bright clear afternoons around sunset. It was beautiful at night too, and one evening around midnight after Rob had gone to bed I put on my big coat and went out for a daunder - to drink in the moonlit snowscape.
Thoughout, we have been very grateful for the comforting knowledge that there are neighbours close at hand who could provide help and essentials - no need to be stuck if you run out of painkillers or potatoes.
This week has made me reflect on the importance of neighbours. Our community is resilient - but it is also very small. On a winter evening, whether or not you can see lights in other windows starts to feel important. About 6% of homes in Argyll and Bute and 3% of homes in the Highlands are second homes apparently, but in our area it is much more than that - about 40%.
Highland Council is in the process of introducing stringent new licensing requirements for short-term lets. But in a rural area like ours, that is self-limiting. There is no workforce available to do cleaning and changeovers so - bar one who drives up from Glasgow to do changeovers - all the people who run short-term lets here are local crofters. This is a traditional part of a Highlanders’ income stream. When I was a child, our very first family holidays were to Morar, where our hosts would decamp to a tin shack at the foot of the garden every summer while we rented their crofthouse.
The second home issue seems to be different. Recently, I listened to one of my young associates’ business studies lectures in the car, on the subject of elastic and inelastic supply. The example that was given of “inelastic” supply was seaside villas in the south of France. There are not suddenly going to be tons more of these - so, as an asset class it is a relatively safe, and inflation-proof place to keep your money. It reminded me that a friend used to refer to the high street in his village in Highland Perthshire as “Asset Management Street”.
The likelihood is that every time a stone villa with a sea view comes up for sale it will become another dead zone, with permanently dark windows and a gloomy, unfriendly air. Of course, second homeowners do contribute to the community - many of them have long-term links with somewhere they love. Others have rescued and restored old cottages that were on the point of collapse or built kit houses on plots of land that were not used for anything much. They obviously are, and will continue to be, part of the ecosystem of the Highlands - but there needs to be a balance.
There are people who do actually want to live here, and businesses in the area struggle for staff, but there is no accommodation. Many holiday homes are owned by people who live and work in the south of England - they don’t pay taxes in Scotland and that may become more of an issue as Scotland moves towards independence.
The Welsh government is creating a licensing system with three planning classes- second home, short-term let and primary home, and planning will be required to move a dwelling from one class to another. No doubt there would be some pushback from people who want to get the highest prices for their homes - but planning pemits would give the council tools to prevent communities like ours from having a disproportionate number of holiday homes. At the moment there is absolutely nothing they can do to affect this.
Our snowy interlude in the Highlands is finally over - it started to rain last night and it is as if the white stuff was never here - as Burns put it: “like the snow falls in the river, a moment white - then melts for ever". Time to get up from my desk. A wind is getting up outdoors and I have to fetch wood for the kitchen fire.
Great to know you are surviving it, Jackie. I have always worried about the housing situation inthe Highlands and that's why I never invested in a second hom,e but it is wonderful that the community spirit is flurifhing up your way. I know what the roads are like there and am full of admiration fo you all.
Have a peaceful Christmas.
Prue